A fluid flow process (flow process) includes any process that involves the flow of fluid through pipes, ducts, or other conduits, as well as through fluid control devices such as pumps, valves, orifices, heat exchangers, and the like. Flow processes are found in many different industries such as the oil and gas industry, refining, food and beverage industry, chemical and petrochemical industry, pulp and paper industry, power generation, pharmaceutical industry, and water and wastewater treatment industry. The fluid within the flow process may be a single phase fluid (e.g., gas, liquid or liquid/liquid mixture) and/or a multi-phase mixture (e.g. paper and pulp slurries or other solid/liquid mixtures). The multi-phase mixture may be a two-phase liquid/gas mixture, a solid/gas mixture or a solid/liquid mixture, gas entrained liquid or a three-phase mixture.
Various sensing technologies exist for measuring various physical parameters of fluids in an industrial flow process. Such physical parameters may include, for example, volumetric flow rate, composition, gas volume fraction, consistency, density, and mass flow rate.
One such sensing technology is described in commonly-owned U.S. Pat. No. 6,609,069 to Gysling, entitled “Method and Apparatus for Determining the Flow Velocity Within a Pipe”, which is incorporated herein by reference. The '069 patent describes a method and corresponding apparatus for measuring the flow velocity of a fluid in an elongated body (pipe) by sensing vortical disturbances convecting with the fluid. The method includes the steps of: providing an array of at least two sensors disposed at predetermined locations along the elongated body, each sensor for sampling the pressure of the fluid at the position of the sensor at a predetermined sampling rate; accumulating the sampled data from each sensor at each of a number of instants of time spanning a predetermined sampling duration; and constructing from the accumulated sampled data at least a portion of a so called k-ω plot, where the k-ω plot is indicative of a dispersion relation for the propagation of acoustic pressures emanating from the vortical disturbances. The method also includes the steps of: identifying a convective ridge in the k-ω plot; determining the orientation of the convective ridge in the k-ω plot; and determining the flow velocity based on a predetermined correlation of the flow velocity with the slope of the convective ridge of the k-ω plot.
Another such sensing technology is described in commonly-owned U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,354,147 and 6,732,575 to Gysling et al, both of which are incorporated by reference herein in their entirety. The '147 and '575 patents describe a spatial array of acoustic pressure sensors placed at predetermined axial locations along a pipe. The pressure sensors provide acoustic pressure signals to signal processing logic which determines the speed of sound of the fluid (or mixture) in the pipe using any of a number of acoustic spatial array signal processing techniques with the direction of propagation of the acoustic signals along the longitudinal axis of the pipe. The speed of sound is provided to logic, which calculates the percent composition of the mixture, e.g., water fraction, or any other parameter of the mixture, or fluid, that is related to the sound speed. The logic may also determine the Mach number of the fluid. Such sensing technologies are effective in determining various parameters of a fluid flow within a pipe. However, as with any computationally complex process, there remains a need to increase computational efficiency and accuracy.
Unfortunately however, in most industrial plants the infrastructure required to obtain this information from installed meters is limited. For example, most infrastructures typically only provide an analog interface of 4-20 mA. This is inadequate for carrying the desired information due to an insufficient amount of bandwidth in its standard analog mode. Moreover, even with superimposed digital communications this analog interface is unable to provide the bandwidth required to transfer a sufficient amount of information for desired purposes.
Thus, the ability to obtain/upload information from/to a meter, including software upgrades/changes, commonly measured parameters, meter health information and any additional information that may pertain to the quality of the commonly measured parameters and/or functionality of the meter would be helpful. This is desirable because any information regarding the fluid and health/performance of the meter may aid in diagnosing and optimizing the meter performance. As such, a collection of this information from monitoring stations disposed in multiple locations around an industrial plant promises the potential for developing a better understanding and thus a more efficient control process. Additionally, this collection of information could better provide the ability to troubleshoot existing conditions and/or predict potential future problems. Moreover, the ability to reconfigure existing meters would allow meters to be tailored for a specific task as desired without the need to change the entire meter.